"Have I met her?" he asked me.
I smiled to myself and said, "You married her fucking mom."
There was a pause on the other end of the line and then Dad asked me. "You love her, son?"
"I do," I told him. "I had to get away to clean the fuck up."
I could almost hear him nodding on the other side.
"Talk to my friend Alastair Reynolds," Dad said. "He'll get you sorted."
Three.
That's how many hours later I made it to the office of Alastair Reynolds - a Managing Director with Carter Jeffries' London office.
"Joseph Brooks sent me," I said as I sat down in his office.
"Ah yes, the prodigal son," Alastair replied, leaning back.
Alastair was a fat man, with a round and jolly face that was always pink. He was about 5' 9" and I towered over him. But he didn't let on that fact at all. Instead, he put me to work.
"You'll be assisting the currency traders who trade the LIBOR," he said to me as he walked me around. "You'll be paid on commissions from the profits your team makes."
Which means if we fucked up, I wouldn't get paid shit.
Bad time to let you know I only took $5,000 in cash and left all the credit cards at home?
Ten.
That's how many certification exams I had to study for during the last three months.
"You don't need a degree to trade currencies, Cody," Alastair told me one day as I was complaining about the tests. "But various governments will require that you study and pass those exams. They don't want financial chaos."
Sixteen.
That was the typical workday. Up at 6 am. At work by 7. Study for exams till 9. First trades start coming in at 9:01 am. Work like a fucking dog all day till 9 pm. Maybe find fifteen minutes to scarf down some lunch and some coffee. And then when the evening shift left at 9 pm, I had to stay an extra hour to clear up the day and get the platforms all ready for the next morning. Make sure all open trades were accounted for. No one else was working as hard as me.
Zero.
That's the number of times I complained. This is exactly what I needed. This is exactly what I wanted. I had to build street cred and I had to do it fucking fast. Because I couldn't stay in London forever. I had to take my FOREX exams - all ten of them and get back to New York. To be with fucking Kim.
One hundred.
That's the percentages of exams that I passed.
I know. You heard that right. Passed.
I mean, some were close. Don't get me wrong. But for the last three months, the number of books I've been hitting and the amount of time I've been spending studying has been more than at any point in my life.
I mean, I'm fucking intelligent if I try and apply myself, you know? It's just that in New York, I never had any incentive to. If you had asked me to study like this in New York, I would have told you to get the fuck out.
But then Kim came.
And all of a sudden I had a big fucking reason to get my shit together.
Seven.
That's how many hours I've been back in New York.